BONSAI

With their sophomore effort "Bonsai", the Chilean instrumental quartet Octopus has just shown that an important part of the future of prog metal lies beyond the realms of the seminal Anglo Saxon lands and the spectral woods of Sccandinavia. South America is also a fertile field for ballsy prog music. This album's repertoire is an amazingly inspired catalogue of pieces ordained by the fluid amalgam of intense musical ideas craftily performed across its variations and internal contrasts and shifts in both texture and rhythm. Bands like Dream Theater (early 90s era), Spiral Architect and Fates Warning (early 90s era, too) come to the listener's mind as points of reference while enjoying the constant guitar duelling and the robust deliveries served by the rhythm section, but there is more than that in Octopus' sonic attacks: you can also find traces of contemporary KC (a factor that undoubtedly links them stilistically to their compatriots of Autómata and Exsimio), hard jazz-rock (Attention Deficit, BLS, LTE), and even some occasional fusionesque adornments that enter the spectrum to add some weird diversity. Drummer Critóbal Orozco provides a sense of solidness for the band as a whole with his performances, in which sensitiveness and power are perfectly combined. Octopus can be labelled as the South American response to Canvas Solaris, for instance. Well, now let's focus on the repertoire itself. The first four tracks are stormy, vibrant pieces in which the foursome give lessons on how to integrate different aggressions into a solid unitary blow of sound and strength. The progressive element is crucial, since there is always room for dramatic tempo shifts between motifs and artsy expansions of the main riffs. This series has a very cohesive feel, although it would be fair to give special mentions to the mysterious, somber mood incarnated in the main passages of 'Ruka Pillán' and the superlative explosion of sound delivered across the sequence of permutations comprised in 'On/CD'. After these first four numbers, comes 'Catarsis', whose intro on bass guitar arpeggios serves as a preparation for a moment of introspection. The presence of a string section and an extra acoustic guitar (played by Daza) help to build up the aura of dense melancholy. A delicatessen that only lasts 4 ¾ minutes, but indeed the tiem duration is well served. This mood is only momentary, since the explosion of extrovertive power returns with an infinite vengeance for tracks 6 & 8. 'Bipolar' and the namesake closure have to be the album's highlights. The alternations between rawer and subtler passages and the display of sonic whirlwinds find their ultimate expressions in these restless pieces of tension and energy: while 'Bipolar' is more closely related in spirit to tracks 1 & 4, 'Bonsai' incorporates traces of classic LZ and 80s KC to the fore in many crucial passages. Sandwiched between the two, 'Viento Sur' offers a bizarre mixture of Latin jazz and prog metal, a combination that may not be 100 % cohesive, but it certainly shows an interesting novelty in the area of prog metal. "Bonsai" is a top-notch prog metal opus and Octopus is a world-class group: this band truly deserves recognition from the prog- friendly audience and the average prog metal fans all over the world.